Early in my search I was tempted to look at every job posting that showed up on a job board. Not a smart idea. Do you know how many hundreds, no, thousands of postings there are for just one website like Monster? You have to narrow your search.
One thing I discovered that job boards seem to do a very poor job of selecting jobs that fit me.Even narrowing my search down to an industry and a geographic area proved unproductive. I would register for free service and select the job categories I wanted. The job board would then send me daily notices based on my criteria. What I found was that I got a lot of junk job postings that I had to wade through to find the ones that might fit me.
What I finally discovered was that the best job boards were highly specialized. I joined a professional association for Trainers and Developers. They had their own regional website and a section devoted to training and development jobs in the Portland area. I also connected with the local HR network and likewise found great leads in the Human Resource field through them.
I read a recent article that detailed where were the best places to look for job postings. Would you believe it? In one study last year 20% of the people hired for jobs found the job on the company website.
When fishing on the Internet look for professional association websites and company websites for employment. They are more productive then the big job boards. It takes time and effort to find these smaller websites but its worth the time and effort.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Day 12 Better fishing holes for job postings
Day 11 Be productive, not just active
When I first started out applying for jobs I went to the job boards on the Internet. They posted hundreds of openings every day. Surely there are dozens of jobs I am ideally suited to fill. It surprised me and then dismayed me to realize that big name job boards generated very few leads. The job postings look promising, positions were within a reasonable distance from where I lived but I rarely resulted in a call or interview.
Do not mistake activity for being productive in your job search. Be careful what you measure. Eight hours in front of the computer looking at job postings is admirable but is it effective use of your time?
Responding to a hundred job postings may make you feel good but how many hits did they produce? How many interviews did they generate?
After weeks and months of fruitless hours searching the big boards I came to realize there had to be better places and ways to search for work.
If your Internet search isn't producing calls and interviews, then change strategy or tactics. Don't waste time, don't waste weeks and months hoping for results. I discovered that the jobs are out there but searching the job boards is not the best way to find out about them.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Day 4 Don’t rely on old knowledge and skills to find a new job
The last time I began a new job search was in 2003. But when I started looking again three years later in 2006 I quickly discovered that the rules and methods for finding a job and applying for it have radically changed.
The first change I noticed is that most job postings today are being done electronically. I used to rely on (for a subscription fee) a monthly mailing from my old alumni placement office for a listing of a few dozen jobs. A posting could be nearly a month old before I received it.
Today job seekers subscribe to Internet job boards. I fill out a free profile and request personalized job alerts to be sent to my email address daily or even hourly. I get a steady stream of job postings sent to me every day from several electronic job boards. The upside is that I am getting very fresh job postings. The downside is that most alerts do a very poor job of identifying useful leads.
The Internet allows me to do a much broader search for job postings than the old ways of finding job leads. Another downside is that I am often overwhelmed with dozens and even hundreds of worthless job postings.
The second change I noticed is that most companies want you to submit an electronic resume and not a paper one. It was not that long ago that you typed your resume and cover letter and mailed it to a potential employer. Today you submit it over the Internet via Email or you fill out an online application and upload your resume and cover letter and submit it on the company website.
The upside to this change is that you speed up the process of getting your resume to the employer. The downside is that you need to learn how to fill out and submit online applications. This is an essential skill you must learn. With many companies, the only way you can apply for a position is by doing it online. They no longer accept paper resumes.
Today you have to learn how to search for jobs on the Internet and you have to learn how to apply for them online. It is essential to learn how to do both. Learn and change how you look for work if you hope to make a successful job or career transition at this stage of your life.